Somerville, MA Privacy & Surveillance: Facial Recognition Ban (2026)

Sec. 9-25(b) flatly bars 'Somerville or any Somerville official' from obtaining, retaining, accessing, or using any face surveillance system or any information derived from one. 'Somerville' is defined to mean any department, agency, bureau, or subordinate division of the city, and 'Somerville official' covers any officer, employee, agent, contractor, subcontractor, or vendor acting on the city's behalf (Sec. 9-25(a)). 'Face surveillance' means an automated or semi-automated process assisting in identifying or verifying a person from the physical characteristics of the person's face, and a 'face surveillance system' is any software or application performing that function.

The ban was adopted by Ord. No. 2019-16 on June 27, 2019, making Somerville one of the first Massachusetts cities to bar its own police department and other agencies from using facial recognition tools. The ordinance builds in a suppression remedy: data collected or derived from a violation, and evidence derived from it, cannot be received in evidence before any city department, officer, agency, regulatory body, legislative committee, or other authority under the city's jurisdiction (Sec. 9-25(c)(1)). Nothing in the ordinance limits rights that residents already hold under state or federal law (Sec.

9-25(c)(4)). The ban applies citywide to every department and to any contractor or vendor working on the city's behalf, not just the police department, so a private vendor supplying facial recognition data to a city agency is equally covered.